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March 31, 2014
H.L. Mencken on the fine line between helping people and controlling them
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 PM | Your Say (3)
Liberte, egalite, facsimile -
When was the last time you enjoyed, say, a contemporary French film? How many must-see French actors are there?Their most famous actor has now taken out Russian citizenship (and moved to Belgium). Name a living French painter worth the wall space. Name a great French musician. A novelist, apart from Michel Houellebecq—and the French hate him. Their vaunted cuisine has become a moribund tourist performance. - - A. Gill at vanityfair.com ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:26 PM | Your Say (9)
"Abundance is abnormal"
Conspicuous, wasteful consumption is abnormal. Food fads and bizarre diets are abnormal.Normal is scarce calories. Normal is spirited competition to get those calories. There is one bright spot. Low-calorie, low-fat, nutrition-free food, an insane notion to those with long memories, may be this year's worst marketing idea. We'll know sanity has been restored when butchers don't dare to trim the fat off meat. ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (2)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Report: Ronan Farrow's MSNBC Program is Facing Cancellation:Nielsen rated Wednesday's show 708th among all programming in total viewers in the crucial 18-49 age group. As the Daily News notes, the show was beat out by a "Golden Girls" rerun on the Hallmark Channel.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (8)
Putin, Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
The Central Election Commission of Ukraine confirmed Darth Vader’s entry into the race. A complete application along with the required 2.5 million hryvni as a monetary deposit were submitted Saturday. The fee of 2.5 million hryvni is over $200,000 US - - Neatorama
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (4)
"We don't swim in your toilet. Please don't pee in our cheese."
Cheese factory in Siberia closed after employees bathe in milkPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (2)
Fish Instead of People, Ideologies without Consequences
There is a great sickness in California, home of the greatest number of American billionaires and poor people,land of the highest taxes and about the worst schools and roads in the nation. The illness is a new secular religion far more zealous and intolerant than the pre-Reformation zealotry of the Church. Modern elite liberalism is based on the simple creed that one’s affluence and education, one’s coolness and zip code, should shield him from the consequences of one’s bankrupt thoughts that he inflicts on others. We are a state run by dead souls who square the circle of their own privilege, who seek meaning in rather selfish lives, always at someone else’s expense. -- Works and Days
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (1)
March 30, 2014
Rumours Of War | Al Stewart
You tell me, just look all around
At the past and the present, the cross and the crescent,
The signs and the planets are lining up like before
There are souls on fire in the day and the night
On the left and the right, in the black and the white
You can see it burn in the eyes of the rich and the poor
Rumours of war
Rumours of war
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (2)
Ye Olde Poll
indicating that a majority of the public believes in Global Warming, supports Gay Marriage, or thinks there ought to be a law against something or other, take a look at this one. Never Yet Melted サ Popular Delusions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (9)
Vladimir Putin & the Appetites of Men
in each & every one of us. It is only the cheerful light of confidence & security which keeps this evil genius down…If confidence & security were to disappear, don’t think that he would not be waiting to take their place.”- George Kennan - - A Catholic Thinker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (9)
Noah: "Think Days of Our Lives meets Waterworld."
I’m tempted to accuse them of being cowardly, dumb, or dishonest, but I’ll just give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they slept through the most troubling parts — like the part at the beginning, and the end, and all of the parts in between. I’m a Christian and I think ‘Noah’ deserves a four star review | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 AM | Your Say (8)
March 29, 2014
"When I was cast as a food columnist, "
I don’t know what got in me to write an essay entitled, “Why Vegetarianism is Morally Wrong,” and conclude with a Serbian sheep’s head recipe. But there you go. There was a violent attack on tofu; a mean-spirited lunge against muffin eaters; an idyllic aside on the importance of smoking in the kitchen (all the great chefs were smokers, and I touched on the symbolism of the ash that drops here and there into the finest dishes)." The catfish chronicles : David Warren
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 PM | Your Say (1)
In Memory of Lawrence Auster
Wander where earth withers away,
Though nothing troubles the great streams
But light from the pale stars, and gleams
From the holy orchards, where there is none
But fruit that is of precious stone,
Or apples of the sun and moon.
—- from “Baile and Aillinin,” William Butler Yeats
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 PM | Your Say (1)
This Just In
U.S. Freezes Putin's Netflix Account : “Unless and until Mr. Putin calls off the annexation of Crimea, no more ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Orange Is the New Black’ for him,” Mr. Kerry said. “The United States will not stand by and reward the annexation of another sovereign nation with a policy of streaming as usual.”Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:47 PM | Your Say (9)
Champ's Back! And It's a Pose, Not a Photoshop
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (5)
Perhaps the choice is not between Democrat and Republican in the long run
-- but between individual liberty or subordination to rank hypocrisy.If history is any guide many, perhaps even the majority, will choose welfare over freedom. Give me bread and call me stupid, but only give me bread. Lord Bevin boasted upon creating the welfare state "I stuffed their mouths with gold." People today are not so demanding. They'll be happy with chump change. - - Belmont Club » Yee Gads
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:12 PM | Your Say (5)
CNN: Bringing you the real news you never knew
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (4)
They don't call it "The Dark Continent" for nothing.
Nigeria: Man Caught with Three Human Tongues and Trove of Women's Underwear Bound in chains next to corpses, Nigerian kidnap victims found in House of Hell where they were due to be sacrificed in black magic rituals by human organ traffickers | Mail OnlinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (2)
The story of Islam is a murder mystery.
The detective peering through his magnifying glass at a curly hair caught in the door isn't wondering who did it. He already knows who the killer is. The great mystery is how to make him stop. Sultan Knish: The Murderer's Honor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (5)
The Mystery of the Sea Unicorn
and was in proportion round like to a porpoise, being about twelve foot long, and in bigness answerable, having a horn of two yards long growing out of the snout or nostrils. This horn is wreathed and straight, like in fashion to a taper made of wax, and may truly thought to be the sea-unicorn.” - – Phenomena: The Loom
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 AM | Your Say (0)
March 28, 2014
Where Clinton Got the Idea
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (1)
No Health Plan For You!
"Nothing I have done, no action I have taken or conversation I’ve had, over the past 5 months, has moved anything forward one iota.
It is doubtful whether, even upon being able to access the necessary pages, view and compare the fine print of plan details, and actually execute any choice within the website (maybe at 3am the “choose” button will activate?) — it is doubtful whether that choice will be preferable in any meaningful way, at the point where I actually need some health care." — — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:33 PM | Your Say (3)
Is it about time that we start searching for America instead of this airplane?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (6)
No Mo Noah!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (1)
Bring Back our Balls!
Today, a permit will run you a million bucks. You can try to start your own company as Uber did, but Uber’s getting sued—again. You used to be able to smoke in NY bars. Now you can’t even smoke in parks. We’ve gone from Marlon Brando saying “I coulda been a contender” to a bloated Philip Seymour Hoffman indulging himself to death in one of his many luxury homes. - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (1)
Russia's Surrounding Our Ukraine and All We Get Is This Lousy Selfie
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 AM | Your Say (8)
March 27, 2014
Champ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 PM | Your Say (1)
America Unleashed: Why We'll Be Number One Once More
Our newly available energy supplies are a powerful force for change in areas other than manufacturing too.With massive new sources of natural gas and domestically produced oil available, thanks to fracking technology (a technology perfected in the U.S.), the U.S. has cut its imports of oil dramatically. Whereas the U.S. imported more than 35 percent of the energy in 2005, in the last quarter of 2013, it imported only about 15.5 percent. To put that in context, the U.S. cut its imports of oil during that period by an amount equal to all the oil Japan uses. Japan is the world's third largest economy. The U.S. is once again the world's largest energy producer. -- Business Desk
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:34 PM | Your Say (7)
The more tolerant society becomes, the more desperate the race and gender hustlers become.
In their determination to keep their pet victims from escaping the reservation,they spread resentment and division, and deny people an opportunity to be treated as equals. As for those of us who decry the creation of designated victim groups, our stock has steadily fallen over the years. As Thomas Sowell put it: “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today.” So you’re part of a minority group. Big deal.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:08 PM | Your Say (1)
They told me that if we elected Obama his years in office would be "historic," and they were right!
Obama Favorability Hits Historic Low [The real question is: If you take out all those jerking knees who support him because of race, how low do his ratings actually go?]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (4)
Children only have one problem, and that's creativity.
The reason you're all still sitting at the dinner tableafter an hour and fifteen minutes has come and gone is because your seven-year-old is still building stonehenge with his french fries. That's creativity, isn't it? The reason your bathroom smells like a cattle stall is all the creative ways that little Magellan you're raising has figured out to circumnavigate the bowl. - - Sippican Cottage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (1)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (10)
Minneapolis Lesbian Police Chief Dons Hijab for “Hijab Day”
There’s nothing like a lesbian feminist authority figure who boasts of being the first female police chief in Minneapolisdonning a symbol of male ownership in a patriarchal tribal society to express the deep schizophrenia of the left in its enthusiastic enabling of Islamists. In other news: Two women accused of having a lesbian relationship have been sentenced to death by a court in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland in northern Somalia. In the first case of its kind in Somalia, a culturally conservative and Muslim nation. -- FrontPage Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (10)
Obama Uses Pope to Recapture Cool - The Rush Limbaugh Show
Meanwhile, here's Obama, he spends 52 minutes -- look at me -- 52 minutes with Il Papa. It makes news all over the world. He spends 20 years in Reverend Wright's church and you can't find a story on it.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (0)
The Paradox of the Intellectual Ignoramus
It cannot escape the attention of any observer that the Left regard themselves as intellectuals....It may have escaped your attention, however, that these people are really, really, really stupid; I mean brain-breakingly stupid, too stupid to understand the law of cause and effect, too stupid to understand the causes of war, too stupid to understand the difference between men and women, too stupid to understand the law of supply and demand. - - The Unified Field Theory of Madness | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:31 AM | Your Say (2)
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. -- Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (10)
Tech Heist: Seeds of Deceit
Hidden beneath the actual popcorn were 100 small manila envelopes of seed with what’s believed to be code numbers written on each one. In his other checked bags, 13 brown grocery-type sacks were found, each with more envelopes. Ye’s bags contained 30 napkins, each wrapped around individual kernels and stashed inside clothing. - - Farm Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (1)
Forget Hillary 2016. Go Straight to the Source of Post-Modern Fascism!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (0)
Passing Through
— the San Francisco Call published the image above on Nov. 19, claiming that the craft had passed over eastern Sacramento the previous night, where hundreds had seen “its brilliant searchlight traveling over the city, and who will also swear that they heard the voices of its occupants and distinguished their merry song and laughter.” - – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (2)
I subscribe to the democrat party’s e-mail updates.
They’re writing this morning to get me all excited about taking back the House of Representatives.They need me to get fourteen people from my city to chip in $3 or more, so they can bring 218 seats under democrat control; see, that’s the thinking. When-are-we-done. What’s the bare minimum — to achieve iron-fisted, dictatorial control on a whole host of issues? When can we start forcing people we don’t know to do everything our way? House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (1)
March 26, 2014
Word
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert CamusPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 PM | Your Say (3)
The Shape of a Post-American World
Instead of a post-American world ushering in a stable multilateral order, it will revert back to a chaotic Lord of the Flies situation in which no single power will predominate, but in which any country or militia that can seize a piece of land or a natural resource will go ahead and do so. For the first time in generations, the First World may wake up to discover that it is once again living under Third World rules. Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:17 PM | Your Say (5)
Andrew Sullivan’s Blizzard of Lies
Domestic traitors, like Andrew Sullivan and the democrat party,who opportunistically switched positions on the war and began enthusiastically lending aid and comfort to the enemy, undermining the morale of the American public, libeling the motives of our actions, and impugning the justice of our cause obviously had a great deal to do with the prolongation of the war. - - Never Yet Melted
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (3)
The ‘Dear Leader Haircut’
that of their leader Kim Jong-Un. Formerly known as the “Chinese smuggler haircut,” the sharp fade with a floppy top has also been worn stateside by Brad Pitt, and is sure to be a staple on the street for ironic trendsetters this summer. Follow the leader. - - BEST EVER
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:00 PM | Your Say (10)
The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
One of these Jumpers came very near to cutting his throat while shaving on hearing a door slam. They have been known to strike their fists against a red-hot stove, to jump into fire and into water. They could not help striking their best friend, if near them, when ordered. It was dangerous to startle them in any way when they had an axe or knife in their hands. - - I found out today
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:45 PM | Your Say (1)
Pot Tax for Pot Holes
NJ senator wants legalize marijuana to pay for roadsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:59 PM | Your Say (3)
The Obama Cartel Got Christmas in Hawaii and All We Got Was the Lousy Bill
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:15 PM | Your Say (5)
Why The Ghostbusters Are Conservative Icons
To your average conservative, this is what always happens when a government regulator interferes in the free market. The agency that attempts, sometimes vainly, to prosecute polluters is an object of ridicule in Ghostbusters. Dr. Venkman is right: Federal bureaucrat Mr. Peck is a pecker. - - — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:30 PM | Your Say (0)
Familiarity begets slavery.
I'm a slave and I realise it. I do everything in my power to fight my masters and I hate every intrusion made, but I realise that in many small ways, and sometimes not so small, I am still a slave. I don't know anyone that isn't frankly. The Creeping Theft of Freedom
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (2)
No Love for Elevators!
“The lack of interest scholars have shown in the cultural life of elevators,” he wrote in a recent e-mail, “is appalling.”....As late as the 1900s, doctors worried about a nausea-inducing condition known as “elevator sickness,” caused by the sudden movement of one’s organs inside the body when an elevator came to a halting stop. How the elevator transformed America
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:57 PM | Your Say (1)
I have observed liberals to be vastly more racist than conservatives and libertarians. It isn’t even close.
All these social welfare programs, affirmative actions, etc. were a signal to African Americans that they were inferior, that somehow they couldn’t make it without help.This became a self-fulfilling prophecy, a kind of mass Stockholm Syndrome. And, quite naturally, it engendered a great deal of anger. Meanwhile, plenty of African Americans succeeded without this dubious “help,” because, quite clearly, they realized they didn’t need it and went on with their lives. Roger L. Simon » The Democratic Party's War on Black People and How to Counter It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:45 AM | Your Say (4)
"Hillary. Because Vagina!"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:03 AM | Your Say (4)
March 25, 2014
Science has been thoroughly Saganized. [Bumped]
The researchers writing them often don't even understand what they're doing wrong and don't care. Research is increasingly indistinguishable from politics. Studies are framed in ways that prove a political premise, whether it's that the world will end without a carbon tax or that racism causes obesity. Sultan Knish: The End of Science
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 PM | Your Say (16)
"The coat hanger is a symbol of the reproductive justice." - DC Abortion Fund
The wire hanger, then, is not an accurate symbol of a bloody and regrettable past, but is rather precisely what the DC Abortion Fund offers it as: a fund-raising tool. In this case, it is a grotesque fund-raising tool, but then abortion is a grotesque business. The wire hanger is a way to change the subject from the reality of abortion in these United States, which is that it exists mainly as a tool for enabling sexual convenience at the cost of a human life. -- The Symbol of a Lie | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (9)
"You elect someone based on the color of his skin, expect more racism."
From Washington Free Beacon: "Pro-Israel Students Called ‘Kike,’ ‘Dirty Jew’ at University of Michigan." President Obama has brought the best out in Americans -- not! Don Surber: Daily ScoreboardPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:07 PM | Your Say (1)
Miss America, 1924
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:04 PM | Your Say (17)
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter."
For if my mental processes are determinedwholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. | "When I am Dead" in Possible Worlds (1927) - - J. B. S. Haldane
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:55 PM | Your Say (5)
The Benefits of Flyover America
Out here where I live it is pretty clear: you don't work, you don't eat; you wanna dance you gotta pay the piper; you do the crime you do the time (or other punitive measure); you work harder than the next guy you get paid more. The list is long but simple. Probably even the childs not left behind could muddle through it. Advanced involvement will require interest in the local schools, churches, any fraternal organizations, bake sales, fund-raiser carwashes, being able to wave at people you actually know their names. Saluting the flag (if you have to ask which one you better go back to the beehive). I'm glad they don't come out here. -- chasmatic in New York loves an easy dollar
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 AM | Your Say (9)
Resist the idea of subversion, and instead subvert the subverter.
The path to cool is always about undermining the normal, undoing tradition, because to the hip and cool whatever comes before is old and stupid.And so you have to resist that urge to be accepted, to be liked, you have to instead subvert the subverter. Be happy in embracing the common sense or the tradition. Be proud that you’re in the military or that you got a good job and that you actually build things. Don’t be embarrassed that you happen to be religious. These are things that are always undermined by the cool. - - Greg Gutfeld
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (6)
It's Always Been a Rag Devoted to Treason
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (0)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (1)
Things that make you go "Hummmmmm...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (5)
The Little People
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (6)
"Third Shogun"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (0)
"Mokita."
[Kiriwina, New Guinea.] "Truth everybody knows but nobody speaks." Noun.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (3)
March 24, 2014
"The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand,"
and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order. That kind of thing is characteristic of nature. - - J. B. S. Haldane
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 PM | Your Say (2)
Note the bullying nature of Putin.
He prefers scanning westward to slice off parts of Georgia, Ukraine,
and perhaps next the Baltic states rather than eastward to pick a border fight with, say, his neighbor China. He bets big-time that affluent and leisured Americans in the post-Iraq and -Afghanistan Age fear tough diplomacy as much as they do war, and thus skip the former in fear it might lead to the latter. Works and Days サ Of Pre- and Postmodern Poseurs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 PM | Your Say (6)
The Japanese. Nuked....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:56 PM | Your Say (13)
President Pleads Desperate Asshole Tries to Sell Shit Nobody Sane Wants to Mouth-breathing Morons
The Obama Twitter feeds are filled with desperate pleas to buy ObamaCare;harnessing every memeworthy bit of internet detritus from cat pictures to twerking in the hopes of convincing healthy young people who don't want health insurance to buy it anyway. Sultan Knish: A Tale of Two Centuries
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:08 PM | Your Say (3)
The Amazingly Vapid and Vastly Premature Ted Cruz to the Future™ - Comic Coloring Activity Book!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:41 PM | Your Say (1)
New York loves an easy dollar. That old slogan “I Love New York” was just part of a long con.
It took ten years before the Greeks and the Bangladeshis in my neighborhood stopped sneering
when I spent my money in their crappy corner groceries and made eye contact with me. But once I had grudgingly earned their respect, you know what? They turned out to be wise, jolly, lovable scamps who taught me to love life to its fullest, while speaking broken English. That’s a lie, of course. They were all assholes. Just cranky, angry people. - - New York Doesn’t Love You
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (9)
Lost in the Ozone Again
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (1)
And then all the children ran away to join the freak show.
The electronic media have taught us, both as broadcasters and receivers, to value fireworks. Nothing else gets through.Our children send crude tweets and jeopardize their professional future by posting debauches or brawls on YouTube, all because they want desperately to demarcate some sort of individuality, and the only means of distinction available through Internet and iPhone is strident vulgarity. This search for difference accounts for excessive and obscene tattooing, wearing of rings in noses and lips and foreheads, spiking and bizarre coloring of hair, shaving of heads, and other kinds of repellent self-defacement so common in young people now. That is, e-culture has left them so alone and insignificant at their various “world at your doorstep” terminals that they settle for drawing any kind of notice. To be remarked as a “freak” is at least to be remarked. - - Post-Literate Reading and Writing
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (2)
"It takes a man like me to make a woman like me."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (2)
Instead of....
Instead of being a protector of man's rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator;instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim—so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. --- Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness, 1961
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (5)
Equally tough was Juliane Koepcke.
She was “the sole survivor of 93 passengers and crew in the 24 December 1971, crash of LANSA Flight 508… in the Peruvian rainforest. After her airliner broke up in midair, she survived after falling about 3 km (~10,000 feet) still strapped to her airliner seat, before the seat crashed through the rainforest canopy and came to rest on the forest floor.” Having reached the ground she got up to look for survivors.Belmont Club » The Men Who Fell To Earth
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (1)
March 23, 2014
New York:"Hell with good restaurants."
Because New York is a penal colony built and guarded by the convicts.The rivers and oceans are natural moats keeping the maniacs in, and the rest of the country relatively safe It’s overcrowded, noisy, and in the summer it smells like a mass grave. Men masturbate on subway trains. Everybody is in a hurry to get somewhere important always at all times. Money is Jesus. New York Doesn’t Love You
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:31 PM | Your Say (7)
"Side by side: Rick Owens $450 Tee vs. Hanes $5 Tee" [Bumped]
and that the price difference stems from some transcendental, immaterial property only a few can recognize. Perhaps these people are right in that only a few can recognize the differences but this is because only a few have seen the stuff in person. Where these people are misguided is in thinking the differences are imaginary. I want to offer proof by making a side by side comparison. - - Reddit : malefashionadvice
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:31 PM | Your Say (22)
The Second World War was sparked
by Warsaw’s resistance to Berlin’s demand to annex the Polish Corridor, a small stretch of land —smaller than Crimea—separating the German provinces of Pomerania and East Prussia. Hitler responded by invading Poland and partitioning it with the Soviet Union. Britain and France had pledged to defend Polish independence, and two days after Germany invaded, they declared war. In his war message, Chamberlain explained that Hitler’s actions showed “there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.” Guest Post: Would America Go To War With Russia? | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (6)
How We Live Now
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (5)
Keep on Rockin' in the Free World
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (3)
Dream House
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (5)
March 22, 2014
Left-liberal types live in bubbles,
mixing only with others who think like themselves. Their notion of those who think differently is abstract, taken from movies, TV, and the high school Eng. Lit. canon. What Hatewatchers HatePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 PM | Your Say (2)
Winter Surfing in New England
Yesterday’s storm left over a foot on the ground, the top layer an icy crust from the wet ocean air. At 29 degrees it’s by no means a warm day, though not bad for this Polar Vortex winter. Dressed in a down jacket, a few base layers and trusty Bean boots, I’m optimistic I’ll be comfortable outside all day, but then, I’m not diving into hypothermia-inducing water. - - Photo Essay: - Gear Patrol
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:41 PM | Your Say (5)
Yes, It Has Come to This
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:59 PM | Your Say (6)
Pick up a copy of Obama’s $3.9 trillion budget
On Page 930 of the budget that never ends is $575 million for “family planning/reproductive health” worldwide especially in "areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species."The idea that the way to protect insects, fish and animals is by preventing human beings from having children is part of an approach known as Population, Health and Environment (PHE) which integrates population control into environmentalist initiatives. Sultan Knish: The Genocidal Duck Whisperers of the Post-Human Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (3)
Barry Manilow wrote the State Farm advertising Jingle “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There.”
He’s also worked on jingles for Band-Aid, KFC, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and McDonalds.
- A contronym is a word that can be its own opposite, for example, “left” can mean to “depart” and “remain.”
- Cats are the only known animal, including humans, that prefer to be given things freely, rather than needing to do some task to get them. Google “contrafreeloading” for more on this one.
- The largest island on a lake which is itself on an island in a lake is Treasure Island in Lake Mindemoya, which is on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron.
- Oranges are a berry, as are bananas. Strawberries however are not technically berries, they are aggregate fruits.
- How do we know vampires don’t exist? If each vampire ate just 1 meal a day, starting with just 1 vampire and each victim then turning into a vampire, it would take about 1 month for the entire human population to become vampires.
- The world’s best-selling sci-fi novel to date, Dune, was rejected 20 times before being accepted… by a car manual publisher (Chiltons).
- “School” comes from the Ancient Greek “skhole”, which meant “leisure or spare time”.
- Washington D.C. boasts about 277 lawyers for every 10,000 residents. This is nearly 14 times more lawyers per 10,000 than any other state in the United States (New York being the runner up). The lowest lawyer rate per capita is North Dakota with around 4 lawyers per 10,000 people.
- Lyme disease has nothing to do with limes or limestone, but rather is a bacterial infection. It is named after a city, Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first recognized as a distinct medical disease.
- The “Like” button in Facebook originally was going to say “Awesome”, rather than “Like” according to Facebook Engineer Andrew Bosworth. Zuckerberg eventually vetoed the “Awesome” button in favor of the shorter “Like”.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (2)
Willard Library, Evansville; Indiana, 2011.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:46 AM | Your Say (3)
Mr. Putin's Very Bad Day
In Moscow, hundreds of thousands of customers of the sanctioned Bank Rossii,Sobinbank, SMP Bank, and Investcapital Bank discovered that their Visa and Mastercards were no longer being accepted. Their funds are only accessible at the banks themselves.... Putin’s pledge to deposit his official $170,000 salary in Bank Rossii did little to calm its depositors. - - The Noose Tightens On His Inner Circle And The Russian People
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 AM | Your Say (9)
March 21, 2014
10 signs that you are rich
You look like a normal human, with your normal eyes and normal ears and hands that are curiously soft, but you are not like a normal human. You are rich. You are different… YOU DON’T SHOP FOR FOOD. YOU DON’T BOOK FLIGHTS.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:59 PM | Your Say (6)
Absolute Zero is 0K
He produced a flask of bluish liquid oxygen--which boiled boisterously at room temperature--and used it to flash-freeze a vial of alcohol. Lastly he ignited the liquid oxygen vapors in a brief, dramatic flourish of flame. He concluded these low-temperature demonstrations by explaining to the audience that science was pressing ever closer to the coldest possible temperature, whereupon the molecules would become entirely still, and the "death of matter" was likely to occur. Vigorous applause ensued. • Damn Interesting
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 PM | Your Say (2)
"Science is as yet in its infancy,"
and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe..... The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new. Whether in the end man will survive his ascensions of power we cannot tell. But the problem is no new one. It is the old paradox of freedom re-enacted with mankind for actor and the earth for stage. J. B. S. Haldane
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:57 PM | Your Say (3)
"Mustang Sally"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:52 PM | Your Say (2)
The main repository of the Ukrainian spirit is the peasantry.
To break that spirit, Stalin must destroy the peasantry.At the time, there were around thirty million Ukrainian peasants. Technically, one could have annihilated a significant portion of them by building a network of gas chambers. But that is an error Stalin did not commit. He who builds gas chambers bears all the blame, brings the disgrace of being a murderer down upon himself. Instead, Stalin saddled the victims of the crime with all the guilt for it: You are dying of hunger because you do not want to work. The Ukrainian Plan (from Imperium)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:25 PM | Your Say (3)
Prior to this 19th-century cold rush
most European scientists believed that coldness itself was an actual physical substance--made up of atoms of an airborne primordial gas.This explained why water expanded upon freezing--it was taking in a large amount of these cold particles. Physicist Robert Boyle dispelled this notion in 1665 by painstakingly weighing water before and after putting it outdoors on a freezing night, demonstrating that only its volume had changed, not its mass.Absolute Zero is 0K
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (0)
It's Come to This
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (0)
What’s important to hatewatchers is feelings, wo wo wo feelings.
“I may carry a Y chromosome, but by golly I feel like a woman!”Well, then (says the hatewatcher), you are one, honey, and we’ll adjust your anatomy accordingly. There is a psychiatric condition called Cotard’s Syndrome in which the sufferer believes himself to be dead. Would it be right to bury or cremate such people? If not, why not? - - What Hatewatchers Hate
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:38 AM | Your Say (1)
No Monster Left Behind
We wanted to single out Suki here because that pale pink dress and white tights is so deliciously Sixties, but when it came to cropping out Karl and Cara in PhotoShop we had a good stern word with ourselves that went a bit like this: ‘You are writing a column about the best dressed people of the week and you are about to confine Mr Chanel and the hottest model of the moment to the digital equivalent of the cutting room floor? You are nothing. You are worthless, etc,’. So we kept them in. -- Tatler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (6)
What is our carbon footprint, asks Bruckner, but “the gaseous equivalent of Original Sin”?
The germ of tyranny lies in religious ecologism.Bruckner reminds us that political absolutism and ideological fanaticism are seldom more than a few steps apart. Given the extent to which energy use is now implicated in the details of our lives, the potential for green activism to devolve into dictatorship is nearly limitless. The great lesson of the twentieth century, Bruckner recalls, is that, "in the wrong hands, the best of causes can degenerate into an abomination."Ecologism: The Campus Cult of Victimhood
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (0)
There's Dashcam Footage, And Then There's Syrian Dashcam Footage
Here's a glorious hour of people I don't much care for blowing up people I don't like. They take turns a little in the middle. All of Syria seems to be some sort of concrete block salesman's idea of paradise, and it crumbles nicely whether you shoot it or bump into it. | The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (2)
March 20, 2014
Magazine Cover of the Month
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:46 PM | Your Say (6)
Yay Spring. You Go, Spring
There is no more firewood. That's bad.But I have a metal basket to burn wood pellets in when the firewood runs out. That's good. But after two years of hard use, the bottom of the basket burned clean through the other night, and the pellets just tumble out. That's bad. Sippican Cottage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (1)
Yes, it's come to this....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:36 PM | Your Say (9)
"I paid to have babies murdered and all I got was this coat hanger necklace?"
Well, some particularly sensitive folks may use a word like “offensive,” or “despicable,” or “disgusting,” or “maniacal,” or “crass,” or “psychotic,” or “evil,” or “degrading,” or “repugnant,” or “repulsive,” or “vulgar, or even “debasing and cruel,” but not everyone shares these sentiments. -- The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (12)
It's All Fun and Games until Someone ends up in a Cone.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:30 PM | Your Say (5)
Because Who Ever Wants to Stop Working and Connecting?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (1)
Transgender Silverton mayor sells shoes to help city
The prices range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. His snakeskin and floral print pair, for example, was going for $10,000 on eBay.... “I guess the unique and creative and crazy thing I did was to decide, 'Well, let's turn my shoe surplus as the first openly transgender mayor in the United States into historic collectibles’ and see if we can find a market for them," he said. -- NWCNEBAY Listing: USA First Transgender Mayor High Heel Shoes w COA Tax Deductible $10,000 but... Free! Shipping! Next up: his panties.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (9)
March 19, 2014
"Goodnight, now it's time to go home." And he makes it fast, with one more thing:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 PM | Your Say (7)
That Firewood Splitting Dude
BTW, every woman in America would crawl over the freshly killed husk of their husband or boyfriend to get a crack at the firewood splitting dude that makes his appearance at 13:20. Sippican Cottage: When Men Were Men And Women Were Glad Of ItPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:33 PM | Your Say (0)
Mattress Scams
(the Sealy Posturepedic Crown Jewel Fletcher Ultra Plush Pillowtop or the Sealy Posturepedic Crown Jewel Brookmere Plush?). They flummox us with bogus science ("pocketed coils"? "Microtek foundations"? "Fiberlux"?). And they weigh us down with useless features (silk damask ticking?). It's like buying a used car, and almost as expensive -- I've seen mattresses going for $7,000. What's a consumer to do?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:24 PM | Your Say (16)
This Just In from "The Religion of Peace"
Sense of Events: Syrian Islamists video slaughter of Christians as act of worship Think religious human sacrifice is not being practiced any more?You don't know Islam. A new angle of the brutal execution-style murders of Christians by Muslims in Syria is being discovered. Walid Shoebat reports that they have now begun conducting "ritual human sacrifices" by firing a bullet to the head or slitting the throat of their intended victims.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:49 PM | Your Say (9)
What Vladimir Putin is Up To
What he most fears is that Ukraine might join NATO, removing yet another buffer state between himself and the West and kiboshing his plans for the Eurasian Union, a euphemism for a 21st century Russian empire. (Does anyone seriously believe Kazakhstan will be an equal partner with Moscow?) Michael Totten | World Affairs Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (8)
Falling in Love With the Dark
and settled in as Nordgren used a laser pointer to explain what we could see in the night sky: giant clouds of interstellar dust and plumes of vaporized debris, some the size of the Earth. He talked about the surface of Titan, a moon of Saturn with Earth-like features, where under a smoggy orange layer it all looks like Minnesota’s Land of 10,000 Lakes, with fractal shores and frozen methane raining out of the sky. - - Light - Nautilus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:34 PM | Your Say (0)
Marriage in "the Religion of Peace"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (5)
Muslim immigration and the dumbing down of the Western world
An increasingly Muslim world will be, ipso facto, most likely, an increasingly less enlightening world.No matter what Orwellian chicanery is spoon fed to the Western populace via propaganda, when building a bridge, or calculating the logistics of commodity distribution, 2+2 must always equal 4 and whilst words might be deliberately obfuscated in the mirk of moral and cultural relativism, mathematics will always retain its power. — RADIX JOURNAL
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (3)
Be .... All That You Can Be
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (12)
Beyond all the lies,
that is the final endgame of the environmentalist movement.It isn't out to save mankind. It's out to destroy it. It wants to treat it like any species of animal, to control its reproduction, control its food distribution and its living spaces. It wants to reduce its numbers to a manageable level so that it takes its place within the animal kingdom. Sultan Knish: The Genocidal Duck Whisperers of the Post-Human Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (2)
America is in a foreign policy clip-joint.
Everything on the menu is bad and all the liquor is bogus.We should be looking for a way back on to the street and not seeking a way to get further in. The word is out: every bad guy within hail knows Obama is a screw-up and worse, one with delusions of grandeur. The enemies of America know they are faced with the ultimate incompetent: the sort who keeps doubling down on a losing hand because he’s too vain to admit error and unable to even see he’s losing. Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (4)
“How funny is it that so many professors labeled Tea Partiers as terrorists,
while kissing the asses of real, bona fide terrorists? It’s not funny, really.But it’s the result of a simple equation: One is cool, and the other isn’t. Own a gun and keep it by your bed in your remote farmhouse? You’re a redneck. Purchase guns that end up killing a judge? Priceless. As long as you cling to cool, progressive beliefs that deem America evil, whatever you do is cool. And if you do it under a big fuzzy ‘fro? Even cooler. Hell, if you ‘fro is big enough, you could nuke an orphanage and still get tenure.” -- Greg Gutfeld’s ‘Not Cool’
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (4)
Title of the Month.... So Far
The Genocidal Duck Whisperers of the Post-Human Left -- Sultan KnishPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:15 AM | Your Say (4)
March 18, 2014
Philippe de Croy, Seigneur of Sempy (detail) by Rogier van der Weyden
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 PM | Your Say (1)
Eating Goat Penis with America's One Percent
But instead of a chocolate fountain there were two muskrats in doggy-style positions, soupy jellyfish, and tarantula skewers. There was grasshopper cheesecake and lamb-brain salad. In the past, Gene has served up Macao monkey, Japanese hornets, and armadillo. - - | VICE United StatesThese people attend under the belief that it actually enhances their status.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 PM | Your Say (10)
Prayer on the Precipice
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 PM | Your Say (4)
The Prankster vs. the Gangster
You know, it's funny, folks, our news media claimed for years that the world viewed George Bush as a cowboy, a renegade, an out-of-control hayseed that did not have the respect of any nation around the world and we were being laughed at and joked about and made fun of. Well, they never laughed at George W. Bush. They never mocked George W. Bush. They may have wished he was dead, but they are laughing at Barack Obama, and they're laughing both at his face, to his face, and in his face. - - Rush Limbaugh
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:21 PM | Your Say (10)
Jared Diamond’s absurd best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel:
It is driven by ideology, not science. The pretty arguments about the availability of domesticable speciesor the spread of disease are not dispassionate assessments of fact but are harnessed to Diamond’s galloping horse of geographic determinism, itself designed to drag the reader away from the idea that genes and evolution might have played any part in recent human history. John Derbyshire On Nicholas Wade’s A TROUBLESOME INHERITANCE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:53 PM | Your Say (3)
How do you know that social consciousness is thoroughly worthless?
When it’s so easy that everyone else is doing it.When it’s integrated into sappy TV sitcoms, and when corporations desperate for approval from people who hate them flaunt it on their websites or on Twitter. When superficial and dumb-as-dirt celebs get involved. - - excerpt from Greg Gutfeld’s new book ‘Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You’
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:15 PM | Your Say (0)
Now they tell me.
Scientists Fail To Find A Link Between Saturated Fat And Heart Disease ..... But....but.... the science was settled!Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:53 PM | Your Say (1)
The Cold Ashes of Republican Foreign Policy
We talk about getting tough with China in the Pacific, without mentioning that China can now sink any American aircraft carrier within hundreds of miles of its coast.Just how are we supposed to get tough? China has gone a long way to closing the military technology gap with the U.S.... We need a massive shift in military spending towards a new generation of technologies.... We will regain American clout when the competition lives in terror of American technological prowess. The opposite is happening now. The competition is gaining on us. Spengler サ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (0)
Analog Memory Desk
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (3)
Pit bulls can maul children to death -- but, hey, why should that stop you from owning one?
Make no mistake, you don’t insinuate that a 4-year-old deserves to be gnawed on by a pit bull because you “love animals.” You say these things because you have a depraved indifference towards human life. -- The Matt Walsh BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (5)
President Mom Jeans
We need a fat president. Or at least one who rarely thinks and never speaks about how he looks in jeans.And one who doesn't spend his day testing his wits against a Hollywood stoner or bantering with Ryan Seacrest while a European ally is being pummeled by Russia. And one who would rather spend his time working than working out, even if it means putting on a few pounds. And one who can pitch from the mound and reach home plate. However confined. Bret Stephens: How Obama 'Gets Things Done' - WSJ.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)
Why do liberals despise Rush Limbaugh?
In the world of Limbaugh the U.S. is the freest, richest, best country in the world and there is no reason to hide that fact, much less to feel guilty about it.Does Limbaugh have any self-doubt? Does he wonder who in the past and present has suffered for his privilege? Does he not grasp the moral compromises that his country so often makes? Perhaps he does, but in a world where the good does not have to be perfect, and 51% is better than 49%, Limbaugh lets others worry about footnoting, tweaking, and nuancing his diatribes. His one-dimensional self-assurance drives liberals crazy. He too is uppity, without a shred of recognition that others far more sensitive, educated, and aware deserve his megaphone. Works and Days サ Liberals and Their Uppity Enemies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:20 AM | Your Say (11)
March 17, 2014
The Big Bang Was First Conceptualized In 1225
wrote a treatise called De Luce (On Light) in which he explored the nature of matter and cosmos. In that, Grosseteste described "the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallization of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth." 4 Neat Facts About The Big Bang That'll Make You Look Smart Without Understanding Any Physics - Neatorama
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:03 PM | Your Say (4)
Earth going to pot
Marijuana grown in California produces more carbon than 3 million cars | Watts Up With That?I’m sure eco-activists will jump right on this trash-making climate-killing water-sucking pot problem we have here in California and include it right up there with the urgency of the proposed statewide plastic bag ban and banning fracking by chartering buses.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 PM | Your Say (6)
The Crescent Saturn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:31 PM | Your Say (2)
A Big List
A Big List of 875 Free Courses From Top Universities: 27,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures - Open CulturePosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:46 PM | Your Say (3)
The Strange Case of Doctor Doyle
Aside from the first novel and the first six stories, the exploits of Holmes and Watsonheld little interest for Arthur. He revelled in their amazing popularity, and enjoyed the lucrative contracts he was able to negotiate, but his basic attitude to the Holmes stories were that they were potboilers. He wrote them for the money, while privately deploring the public demand for such work. As a result he put very little effort into the stories once he had devised the basic puzzle, and they are full of inconsistencies, errors, trite situations, silly dialogue and implausible denouements. | BestQuest
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (4)
Why do liberals hate Sarah Palin?
She thinks America is a rare, good place and far better than the alternative.She is blunt about her values and politics, and does not seem to be skeptical, cynical, or ambivalent. Her âoh goshâ world is one of undisguised belief; she does not roll her eyes in David Letterman boredom. Nor does Palin adopt the Clinton on spec bite-the-lip, feel-your-pain anguish, clear evidence of the costs of feeling moral ambiguity.To the degree she has any facial artifice, it is more likely a wink
(but not in Jon Stewart fashion that you and she share private superiority over the yokels) than a John Kerry long face or the pained stutter of Barack Obama as his vast mind works so fast that his only too human lips cannot catch up. - - Works and Days » Liberals and Their Uppity Enemies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:16 PM | Your Say (11)
A Western elite that was no longer interested in war found that war was still interested in it.
It was a wonderful vision marred only by the circumstance that it was wrong.Detroit is dead and Osama bin Laden's ghost was probably at the controls of MH370. Other misfortunes have raised further doubts. Obama's partner for peace, the object of his reset, the linchpin of his "world without nuclear weapons", Vladimir Putin -- is about to invade, nay has actually invaded -- Ukraine. What a surprise. And the International Community is in shock. Belmont Club » In a Time, in an Age, at a Moment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:22 PM | Your Say (0)
The Cold Ashes of Republican Foreign Policy
We keep digging ourselves in deeper. Now Sen. John McCain wants American military aid for Ukraine.This is silly: the Ukrainian military couldn’t fight Russia with a century of American reinforcement, and every officer of the rank of colonel and above previously served in the Red Army. More than half of Americans oppose even economic aid to Ukraine while three-quarters oppose military aid–and they’re right. We’re all bluster and no bucks: try to come up with an aid package that will keep Ukraine upright given the mood of the American public. - - Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (7)
March 16, 2014
“It is hard to come back to life,” Mamet said,
“Especially when your country is doing what all great civilizations have done, which is to try to use its wealth to eradicate human nature.” -- War Stories: An Interview With David MametPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:07 PM | Your Say (6)
Syria anniversary: the psychopaths are unstoppable
Here is what one jihadist wrote recently as a caption to a photograph of some blindfolded captives: “Got these criminals today. Insha’Allah will be killed tomorrow. Cant wait for that feeling when U just killed some1.” It really is that psychopathic. - - TelegraphPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:05 PM | Your Say (11)
Just the thing if you take a lot of airplane flights....
the Gun Grip Case transforms your iPhone 5 into a handgun! Available in black, white or pink, this fake "pistol" works with an app so you can interact with a digital version of the gun in the same color on your iPhone 5 screen. The app means you can play games of Russian Roulette at parties! Don't worry, you can't actually shoot anyone!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (8)
Vanishing Jet: Admit It, You Knew Where It Would Lead [Bumped]
An al-Qaeda supergrass told a court last week that four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.... In evidence in a court case last Tuesday, Saajid Badat, a British-born Muslim from Gloucester, said that he had been instructed at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan to give a shoe bomb to the Malaysians.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:39 AM | Your Say (39)
March 15, 2014
There are no jobs in the valley. There is no economy. But everybody is busy.
Their husbands hunt. Every winter they go into the forests for three months to hunt squirrels, sables, bears and lynx. These furs they sell to the Russian and Chinese merchants who come to the village knocking on their doors. Hunting the Lynx with the Old Believers | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 PM | Your Say (6)
The Taiga is a million optical illusions.
You shudder at tree stumps shaped like men. You turn around and it's exactly as it was in front — snow, thickets, birch, fir, pine. A copy-paste landscape of clones. Hunting the Lynx | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:00 PM | Your Say (0)
Two sisters lived farther out in the Taiga,
They were said to recite whole scriptures from memory and to have healed sick babies when only little girls. They had taken a vow of silence and now lived in the monastery. The desperate made their way there, to toll their bell over emptiness. But the hunters would not take me. Hunting the Lynx | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:04 PM | Your Say (1)
We followed the lynx into a shaman's grove.
Tied to the birches were rags in blue, yellow, white, red and green. Offerings to the spirits of the place. We did not go through. Farther along, we stopped for the dogs to regain the scent. The old man told me there had been a shaman there for many years. But he had died in February. "There is a hermit . . . One of ours . . . 40 kilometres away. He eats raw fish and glides away like a deer when hunters get too close." Hunting the Lynx | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:06 PM | Your Say (0)
We finished the bottle.
how they grind up the teeth of lynx for tea and stick needles into their foreheads as they sip it. How they sleep clutching lynx fur cuddlies between their legs at night for fertility. How there are whole cities where people live in glass buildings and eat hamburgers three times a day. Hunting the Lynx | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:10 PM | Your Say (0)
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town, I sit me down.
For want of me the world's course will not fail;
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.
- - Coventry Patmore
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:58 PM | Your Say (0)
Princess Grace
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:16 PM | Your Say (0)
That Selfie Really Tied The Internet Together, DID IT NOT?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:06 PM | Your Say (0)
Ted Cruz: other than cigarette smoking, the pic is accurate
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (1)
How come I've never realized this alternate use?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (8)
Sport is Back
kept calling me and calling," he said of his tipsters. "I ended up in Ohio." After driving for hours on his 500-mile trip, Golemis said he eventually met up with the voice on the telephone who gave him Rockwell's painting — still in its storage wrapping.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (1)
Fear of Demagoguery
What's required is a total, absolute destruction of the modern order. Not one of "our" institutions is to be left standing (even the Catholic Church has hopelessly fallen). There is nothing whatsoever worth conserving, burn it all to the ground, and may Conservatism, Inc. be left cowering in the shadows (before being sent to gulags in northern Alaska). — RADIX JOURNAL
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (7)
"It seemed like a good idea at the time...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (4)
One Does Not Simply...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (4)
Forgotten but not gone.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (2)
Swine Crime
Whatever you call this crime, it’s a continuing problem in many nations. Linked to the rise in pork prices, it can be doubly pricey for farmers who suffer the loss of their livestock and then have to dump money into measures to protect themselves from returning thieves. - - Modern Farmer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (1)
March 14, 2014
Thanks to these telescopes, astronomy is poised to reinvent itself over the next few decades.
and all with estimated first light being collected in 2022: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT, headquartered in Pasadena, Calif.), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT, also in Pasadena) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT, headquartered in Garching, Germany). At stake are the mapping of asteroids, dwarf planets, and planetary moons in our solar system; imaging whole planetary systems; observing close-in the Goliathan black hole at the Milky Way’s core; discovering the detailed laws governing star and galaxy formation; and taking baby pictures of the farthest objects in the early universe. The Billion-Dollar Telescope Race - Issue 11: Light - Nautilus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 PM | Your Say (5)
Noonan: "Warnings From the Ukraine Crisis"
The most obvious Ukraine point has to do with American foreign policy in the sixth year of the Obama era.Not being George W. Bush is not a foreign policy. Not invading countries is not a foreign policy. Wishing to demonstrate your sophistication by announcing you are unencumbered by the false historical narratives of the past is not a foreign policy. Assuming the world will be nice if we're not militarist is not a foreign policy. What is our foreign policy? Disliking global warming? - - WSJ.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:34 PM | Your Say (14)
Just stop it!
Word Around the Net: COMFORT FOOD PERVERSIONS Putting liver pâté and beeswax on a pizzadoesn't show your creativity and skill in the kitchen, it shows you have way too much time on your hands and should be beaten with rolled up newspapers. Stick to what you know, go reduce another sauce and create flavored foam on top of a crouton. Do us all a favor and leave the basic stuff alone.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 PM | Your Say (3)
Teeterer Shoes
Porcelain Platform Shoes by Laura Papp: The shoes are not only sleek, they are also functional. They can bear more than 350 lbs, even though the platform is only 2.2 lbs.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (4)
P.S. We Won That War Too
On February 8, 2014, McDonald’s, one of the biggest beacons of Americanism there is, opened its very first restaurant in all of Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon-based Neil Massey photographed the spectacle from 7am to 9pm on opening day and said he’d never witnessed anything like it. The festivities included blaring techno, live bands, and thousands of customers waiting up to two hours in 90-degree heat to get their dose of the famous fast food.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (9)
Servant of the People
charged taxpayers $16,515 one way for a business class ticket from Beijing to Washington D.C. in 2010, NASA confirmed. The agency ‘s reports list the average coach class fare for the trip at $958. In other cases, Bolden not only upgraded himself, but also flew with his wife, Alexis, charging taxpayers premium fares for her tickets as well. - - NASA spends millions to fly first and business class with little oversight
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (4)
It's National Pi Day. Have a Slice!
In the Old Testament of the Bible (1 Kings 7:23), a circular pool is referred to as being 30 cubits around, and 10 cubits across. The mathematician Archimedes used polygons with many sides to approximate circles and determined that Pi was approximately 22/7. The symbol (Greek letter “π”) was first used in 1706 by William Jones. A ‘p’ was chosen for ‘perimeter’ of circles, and the use of π became popular after it was adopted by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737. In recent years, Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits past its decimal. Only 39 digits past the decimal are needed to accurately calculate the spherical volume of our entire universe, but because of Pi’s infinite & patternless nature, it’s a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits. Pi Day キ Celebrate Mathematics on March 14th
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (10)
Nepal Art Dogs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (4)
10 Cold War Weapons That Terrified U.S. Military Intelligence
But when outfitted with chemical dispersal pods, these heavy assault choppers could rapidly crop dust death over a huge battlefield or metropolitan area. And it's not like the Soviets were running short on chemical weapons,—the USSR maintained a supply so deadly, it would make Syria's stockpiles look like a tin of Altoids. - - Gizmodo
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (5)
The Government-Surplus Machines That Power a Cutting-Edge Science Museum
It had a two-cycle engine whose crankshaft bearings were worn out, so it wouldn’t run. So we took it, machined up some brass bearings, bored out the babbitt bearings, got it up and running, gave it a coat of red spray paint, fixed the wooden frame that had kind of rotted, and gave that a spray-can paint job, too. Then we sawed a piece of eucalyptus with it and put it out on the floor. Eventually the guy came back, saw what we had done, and said, ‘You just destroyed a valuable antique!’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s sort of what we do.’” - - Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (2)
March 13, 2014
LinksTrip: Yuri Nakagawa w/ lilLilly, Chocomoo & Fleamadonna in Harajuku
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:50 PM | Your Say (15)
What Does the Space Station Smell Like?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:00 PM | Your Say (2)
WSJ Reporter: Missing Flight 370 Could Have Landed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (2)
The disappointment of the “True Detective” finale
we approach a show as an artistic achievement with all the privileges and responsibilities that this brings, when we may have done better to embrace it instead as pleasurable genre trash. As Rust said to Marty, “You have to be careful about what you get good at.” We have to be careful about the shows we choose to make into Trojan horses, packed with meaning and insight. Sometimes what we are watching contains multitudes, and sometimes there’s nothing inside but air. 'True Detective' and the Art of the Television Finale : The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (3)
Why the U.S. Military Is Into Bee Brain Surgery
“The nocturnal bees that Eric and his people look at in Panama do some light collection and processing tricks that allow them to see in conditions when most insects cannot see, and we are interested in that kind of trick,” - - NautilusPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:59 PM | Your Say (0)
It's Probably Nothing
the Defense Ministry released a series of statements beginning early Thursday that appeared to contradict that. They outlined what was described as intensive training of units involving artillery batteries, assault helicopters and at least 10,000 soldiers.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:55 PM | Your Say (11)
Comic Artist Burns Copies of Book He Got Kickstarter Funded Rather Than Mail Them, Because Capitalism is Bad
John Campbell, who raised over $50,000 on Kickstarter to publish a book of his comics Sad Pictures for Children...."I want direct funding for my living necessities. I want to establish relationships with a group of people who can pay for my baseline needs like food and rent. I am looking for people who do not feel they need to see any “return” on their “investment.” I am looking for people who understand that money is a bad joke we use to hurt each other. " - Hit & Run : Reason.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (11)
The Dirdy Birdy Burger
scandalously dressed in fried chicken hearts, smothered in fig catsup, and bedded on a creamy spread of chicken liver pâté. This is certainly one bird you wonât be bringing home to umami and daddy." - - PornBurger | Burger Perverts Welcome
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (7)
March 12, 2014
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 PM | Your Say (0)
I do not much blame the Left for hesitating to talk about Big Ideas.
The Left has been losing the Big Idea debate for a generation or more,in no small part because its last Big Idea killed 100 million people, give or take, and not in Mr. Klein’s projecting-abstractly-from-a-CBO-study way but in the concentration-camps-and-hunger-terror way. Marxism was the Left’s Big Idea for the better part of a century, and its collapse — which was moral, economic, political, and complete — left a howling void in the Left’s intellectual universe. The Destroyer Cometh | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:05 PM | Your Say (6)
"It's Probably Nothing"
After Annexing Crimea, Russian Troops Are Piling Up By The East Ukraine BorderPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:00 PM | Your Say (6)
6 Castles that cost less than an apartment in NYC…
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (4)
The First Woman President: It’s not Hillary
From these ladies and others Obama drew lessons in how to raise his two beautiful daughters, in the value of women to American society, in the art of wearing mom jeans. - - Washington Free Beacon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (9)
Sagan on Skeptical Science
“Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking.
A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those that tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious who comes ambling along.” — - Carl Sagan
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (5)
Oh shut up!
Chairman Of Joint Chiefs: US Ready For "Military Response" In Ukraine. Yeah, right. I can see Putin shaking in his boots from my house.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (14)
The Ghost Whisperer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (3)
“The operations of my brush were entirely new and unaccountable,” Caitlin wrote among the Sioux.
His goal was to encounter, document, and deliver images of American Indians for education—and profit. His companions were an edgy lot: men looking for furs to buy and land to claim. - - Losing Face— Painting the Savage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (0)
March 11, 2014
The Grove
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 PM | Your Say (1)
Well... as long as she's tidy.
Woman hides in man's closet for a year : Police were investigating how she managed to go in and out of the house unnoticed, as well as details of her life inside the closet, and if she had taken anything else besides food. She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and apparently even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman ‘neat and clean.’Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 PM | Your Say (7)
In 1731, King Frederick I of Sweden gave a lion he had killed to a taxidermist who had never seen a lion before. This was the result.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 PM | Your Say (6)
Now, sometimes I have to yield to the truth.
I don’t like to, but it’s forced on me.Blacks do live miserable in Southern cities. It can’t be denied. There’s a shameful list of awful cities and it hurts me to write it: Newark, Trenton, Camden, Detroit, Flint, Chicago, and Gary. Pretty much the entire South. Notes of a Fed-Up Southerner - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 PM | Your Say (8)
George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 PM | Your Say (4)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:18 PM | Your Say (5)
It is a certain mindset,
a certain way of looking at life and of conducting oneself in it.That mindset does not say — get up again when you’re knocked down, keep on truckin’, take no prisoners. It says the exact opposite of that. It says that you, as an individual, are not capable. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. In fact, if you think you did, you didn’t.... If you only make 25 grand a year now, then trust them on this, take it to the bank — you will never, ever, ever make more than 40 a year. Ever, in your entire life. That’s their vision. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (0)
Why does The Left win?
Today’s liberals are much more shrill and strident than the liberalsbefore President Clinton’s impeachment trial, or the Florida election debacle. They’re also more militant, unwilling to accept compromise in any shape, form or degree. So-called “conservatives” would pile on any one among them showing even a fraction of this sort of intransigence, and blame that zealot for the Republican party’s setbacks — they’d turn on him that way in half a heartbeat. Liberals get to do that all day every day, and it isn’t speaking out against the party machinery, it is the party machinery. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (3)
The Japanese. Nuked too much or not enough?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (3)
These Just In
- ‘No shirt, no shoes, no spliff’: Colorado barber shop bans those who smell of weed | The Raw Story
- An in-depth interview with Jerusalem Post editor and former Netanyahu staffer Caroline Glick on her controversial one-state plan for peace in the Middle East | TheBlaze.com
- Diplomacy Fails In Ukraine: Putin Slams Kerry Plan, Kiev Issues Ultimatum, Crimea Suspends All Non-Moscow Flights | Zero Hedge
- Feinstein: CIA searched Intelligence Committee computers - The Washington Post
- Sotomayor: 'I'm Very Optimistic About The Power of Minorities...' "[W]e’re going to have to work the political system at the highest level.” | Truth Revolt
- Republican “Super Lobbyist”: Conservatives Need To Shut Up And Listen To Republican Leaders "The Republican Party used to fall in line, but now, it is seemingly falling apart."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (5)
Yeah. Right.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (6)
Press 1 Again and Again for English
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (2)
Spring Frock
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (4)
The Great Depression and Scrabble
simply comprising of small cardboard squares with letters on them; otherwise the game was very similar to the modern version. The letters even had their signature point values. He determined these values by performing a frequency analysis on the alphabet from sources such as the New York Times. In order to combat the lazy use of plurals, he only included four ‘S’ tiles. - - Today
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (3)
March 10, 2014
"Glad They’re Dead – And I Have a Sudden Urge To Pee"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 PM | Your Say (8)
"To is, or not to is..."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 PM | Your Say (4)
Russia's aggression prompts other nations to change names
to the president who is almost exclusively interested in American domestic policy? So we thought we might get more interest from him if we had a familiar sounding American name. This was the easiest way." Fearing that the name change alone may not be enough, the Kazakh parliament has begun debate on a second bill to rename the Kazakh ethnicity to 'African Americans,' with the hope that Americans will be more sympathetic to their plight if they are identified with a more familiar ethnic minority. - - People's Cube
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:26 PM | Your Say (5)
Sales of True Detective’s ‘Big Hug Mug’ Are Through the Roof
after a fierce back-and-forth totaling 41 bids. But there are a lot more Big Hug Mugs out there, it turns out. Another sold on February 10 for $95, and another for $85 the day before that. Average auction prices seem to be closing between $76 and $85. - - Grub Street New York
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (3)
Guillotine, Gulag and Gas Chamber: The Glorious Gifts of Atheism to Humanity
Such gruesome realities should come to mind whenever we hear the new generation of atheists asking us to imagine that“there’s no heaven; no hell below us; above us only sky”. Where there’s no heaven, there is only hell. And if we won’t have hell below us, we must have it with us and within us, and also above us, in the form of the hell of political atheism that crushes us underfoot in the name of “reason”. - - Joseph Pearce @ The Imaginative Conservative
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (1)
When Is It Okay to Root for the Villain?
Ask the question, "Are you rooting for Hannibal?" and few can say yes without eliciting major side-eye and anonymous intervention calls to therapists on their behalf. Hannibal is the villain. He is the villain of all villains. He is the most brilliant, cold-hearted, vile man ever to delight so much in his own villainy that the majority of us have ever seen on film. - - i09
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (3)
Jon Stewart, Parasite
with no particular insights or interesting ideas of his own, reliant upon the very broadest and least clever sort of humor, using ancient editing techniques to make clumsy or silly political statements sound worse than they are and then pantomiming outrage at the results, the lowbrow version of James Joyce giving the hero of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the unlikely name of Stephen Dedalus and then having other characters in the novel muse upon the unlikelihood of that name. His shtick is a fundamentally cowardly one, playing the sanctimonious vox populi when it suits him, and then beating retreat into “Hey, I’m just a comedian!” when he faces a serious challenge. It is the sort of thing that you can see appealing to bright, politically engaged 17-year-olds. The Destroyer Cometh | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (10)
What they want to sell to us,
is the message of futility and despair.Stop trying. Give up. You can’t do it. You’ll never win. The boss is trying to screw you anyway, so clock out, go home, spend more time with your family, and most important of all be sure and elect liberal politicians so they can take the money from that evil boss and give it to you. Because Lord knows, you little peons in flyover country will never get hold of two nickels to rub together any other way. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:31 AM | Your Say (0)
Putin Is Everything and More — But Not Stupid
We think Putin is stupid for annexing the Crimea.He thinks we — with the most vast military power in history and the world’s largest economy — are stupid to issue meaningless red lines to Syria, serial empty deadlines to Iran, and step-over lines to himself. We think he is ridiculous with his bare-chested photo-ops; he thinks Obama’s biking pictures and golf get-up are as effeminate as he is macho. - - Works and Days
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (4)
"I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (9)
Good Morning!
Somebody should invent the YouTubeClip Video Alarm Clock.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:39 AM | Your Say (2)
March 9, 2014
[Bumped] Up on the Catwalk
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 PM | Your Say (20)
Make that two who would buy it.
Sense of Events: This is a smartwatch I'd buy Too bad it does not exist. But maybe someday. A smartwatch that actually looks like a watch and does all the smart stuff as well.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:32 PM | Your Say (14)
Are we having fun or what?
Ukraine's Military Mobilizes, Prepares For Combat: Trucks, APCs, SAMs, Howitzers, Tanks Rolling Out ✔ Japan Scrambles Jets In Response To Chinese Military Planes ✔ Interpol probes more suspect passports from missing flight... ✔ TERRORIST FEARS... ✔ Missile? ✔ Russian flags flood Crimean capital as thousands back takeover ✔ Venezuelans queue long hours at markets to buy "whatever they have" ✔ Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 45 People in Southern Iraq ✔ Unexpected Gas Cloud in Space Refills Itself Endlessly ✔ and ✔ ✔Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (6)
When Maddow was a little girl did the Adam's apple give it away or did she have that implanted later?
This magnetic force draws MSNBC’s audience of transgender activists, white privilege professors, terrorist supporters, Israel boycotters, women-of-color microaggression Tumblr bloggers, Whole Foods shoppers going from their egalitarian yoga class to their amnesty protest while sipping a Fair Trade wheatgrass drink and listening to a Decembrists’ song.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:07 PM | Your Say (13)
You had one job....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (8)
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
-- Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:52 AM | Your Say (1)
Rupert Murdoch's new home in New York: A $57M 4-Floor Penthouse
sold for as much as $57.25 million, but this was the price tag on media mogul Rupert Murdoch's pricey new four-floor penthouse pad, at One Madison Park, E. 23rd St. After losing his last place on the Upper East Side, during his divorce, Mr Murdoch has certainly bought a whopper of a bachelor pad to replace it. Home Designing
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:19 AM | Your Say (2)
RE: PRESERVATIVE HERETICAL INACTION CONFLUENCE 2014
Rand Paul convincingly won the presidential straw poll at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington,besting other potential candidates such as Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, that grinning thumbs-up meathead Rick Perry, and the immigration sellout Marco Rubio. At various points during the festivities, Rand Paul quoted Pink Floyd, Mitch McConnell brandished a rifle onstage to the sounds of Bon Jovi, and designated Uncle Tom Elroy Sailer said that “Abortion has been worse on the African-American community than the slave trade or Jim Crow.” The Week That Perished
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:13 AM | Your Say (4)
March 8, 2014
The Harlem riot of 1935
had many of the characteristics of what would become the typical race riot.False information about police brutality circulated by radicals looking to stir up a mob. Looting misrepresented as a civil rights protest. And a swelling undercurrent of bigotry portrayed as outrage. As Congresswoman Maxine Waters would call the LA riots, "a revolution" and a "a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice"; Nannie H. Burroughs compared the Harlem riot to the Boston Tea Party and claimed that it was the duty of the oppressed to revolt. Sultan Knish: The Black Hitler of Harlem
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 PM | Your Say (2)
Bagging a Zero with a Sidearm
The pilot who had hit Baggett circled to finish him off or perhaps only to get a better look at his victim. Baggett pretended to be dead, hoping the Zero pilot would not fire again. In any event, the pilot opened his canopy and approached within feet of Baggett's chute, nose up and on the verge of a stall. Baggett, enraged by the strafing of his helpless crewmates, raised the .45 automatic concealed against his leg and fired four shots at the open cockpit. The Zero stalled and spun in. Valor: David and Goliath
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:44 PM | Your Say (13)
"Did somebody say de-escalation?"
Ukraine's Military Mobilizes, Prepares For Combat: Trucks, APCs, SAMs, Tanks Rolling Out. At the same time along the makeshift border between Crimea and the mainland, the Pro-Russian forces are putting down minefields.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:17 PM | Your Say (6)
Seahorse: The Inside Story
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (0)
The Fall of Trantor
The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds. Have me killed and Trantor will fall not within three centuries but within fifty years and you, yourself, within a single year." [Isaac Asimov, Foundation, emphasis added.] @ Liberty's Torch
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (1)
Be True to Your School
I’ll say it again: These Tea Party groups made the mistake of wanting to participate in the process of legitimization in the first place.Had they NOT applied for tax-exempt/charity status, this wouldn’t have happened to them. And had they been true to their principles, they would not have applied to join the same club they insist they want to burn down. - - Five Feet of Fury
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (10)
Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture.
Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November — and then are surprised that it doesn't make much difference.Culture trumps politics — which is why, once the question's been settled culturally, conservatives are reduced to playing catch-up, twisting themselves into pretzels to explain (including in the pages of this magazine) why gay marriage is really conservative after all, or why 30 million unskilled immigrants with a majority of births out of wedlock are "natural allies" of the Republican party. - - Mark SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (1)
Boyhood Dreams
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (7)
Filthy Rich
The world’s richest in ascending order from tenth to first place are: • Jim Walton $34.7B USA • Christie Walton $36.7B USA • Sheldon Adelson $38B USA • David Koch $40B USA • Charles Koch $40B USA • Larry Ellison $48B USA • Warren Buffet $58.2B USA • Amancio Ortega $64B Spain • Carlos Slim Helu $72B Mexico • Bill Gates $76B USAI wonder how many of them actually pay tax? Or if they manage to get around all of that by some wicked web that has been woven. One thing tells me that if they are officially worth that much, then one they might not have that in the bank at their disposal. Secondly, they might well have double that amount. People never declare what they have or own down to the last dime, do they? - - Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (3)
Enthusiasm for the Paralympics?
To me it smacks of quasi-totalitarian propaganda.An atmosphere has been created in which to admit that one finds the spectacle distasteful is to be guilty of a hate crime, an accusation that nowadays can be hurled at almost anyone who wants to preserve public taste and decorum. The spectacle itself seems to me designed to allow one the illicit pleasure of the freak show while enjoying self-congratulation at one’s own generosity of spirit. I prefer less ostentatious, less orchestrated demonstrations of human decency. - - A Freak Show Called Generosity
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (0)
Most people are stupid.
and just teach some abstract nonsense about queer history and democratic values, people will come up with new things all the time! There's a stupid idea out there that the innovation rate is not enough (tell that to Mesopotamians which decorated their houses the same way for 3000 years), so we need to come up with even more new stuff, but people just can’t keep up. Why could that be? Real Answer: people just aren’t that smart. Mainstream answer: "Kids get bored at school with drilling, so we need to stop drilling and they’ll become super creative!" Human culture in a nutshell | Bloody shovel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (1)
March 7, 2014
Presenting The Dude Foods Mac and Cheese Bacon Weave Taco
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 PM | Your Say (5)
Propaganda works, or writers wouldn’t bother to compose it.
You can lead your audience to certain conclusions by distortion, and then repetition of that distortion,and they read and absorb it without thinking all that much about it because they trust you as a source. And after all, most of your friends, and all the smart people you know and hear, agree. neo-neocon-- How it works when you're Pravda
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:06 PM | Your Say (9)
Why We Have Grass Lawns
The very first lawns were grassy fields that surrounded English and French castles. Castle grounds had to be kept clear of trees so that the soldiers protecting them had a clear view of their surroundings. It wouldn’t do for enemies to be able to sneak up on the castle through the forest. Without trees, grasses sprouted naturally just like they do in fields and clearings today. -- Today I
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (7)
Buzznotes: Bill Murray on "The Montana Cooler"
where you buy a case of champagne and you take all the bottles out, and you take all the cardboard out, and you put a garbage bag inside of it, then you put all the bottles back in and then you cover it with ice, and then you wrap it up and you close it. And that will keep it all cold for a weekend and you can drink every single bottle. And the way I like to drink it in a big pint glass with ice. I fill it with ice and I pour the champagne in it, because champagne can never be too cold. And the problem people have with champagne is they drink it and they crash with it, because the sugar content is so high and you get really dehydrated. But if you can get the ice in it, you can drink it supremely cold and at the same time you're getting the melting ice, so it's like a hydration level, and you can stay at this great level for a whole weekend. You don't want to crash. You want to keep that buzz, that bling, that smile. -- Dazed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (7)
What Women Want. Guess #12,456,781
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (4)
Swamp Signage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (2)
"Flowers" (detail) by Etienne Adolphe Piot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (4)
March 6, 2014
Despite its initial myopia, the Hubble Space Telescope
is one of the most glorious instruments ever made, a genuinely new window on the universe.
Even so, when it first began to send back images of the cosmos in the mid-1990s, Nature was plagued with content-free submissions reporting the first ‘Hubble image’ of this or that astrophysical object. Authors were often affronted to hear that the journal wanted, not the latest pretty picture, but some insight into the process it was depicting. -– Philip Ball – Aeon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 PM | Your Say (0)
This Just In:
AN ARGUMENT on the internet has been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. The conclusion of the dispute, which began in October 1998 on a message board abandoned by everyone else in 2002, has given hope to the rest of the internet. - - Daily Mash
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 PM | Your Say (0)
And the Oscar Goes to No One
The rich American culture of the last century was primarily a middlebrow culture of the people.The Post-American culture is a narrow elitist slice of stinky cheese at the top and a garbage can at the bottom. The elites get politically correct movies that no one else watches and the rest of the country gets movies that emphasize special effects over dialogue so that they can play just as well in Beijing or Moscow as in Kansas. - - Greenfield @ Truth Revolt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 PM | Your Say (5)
Learning How to Hunt Deer in 7 Days or Less
Watching The Empire Strikes Back as a child does not prepare you for the first time you field-dress an animal in the snow.Yes, the organs balloon out as if they're instantly inflating, like when Han Solo cuts open the Tauntaun. But then comes a lot of work. Ten minutes into gutting, I'm “ringing the ass,” running a four-inch German hunting knife around a pelvic canal while Uncle Cy, an experienced hunter, hisses useful advice in my ear, like “Don't ruin my fucking knife.” And “You just ruined my fucking knife.” -- G Q Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:06 PM | Your Say (7)
So how do we get our cities to grow up?
In fact, it's actually keeping them down because it's increasing the housing supply. "The simple truth is that if you want home prices to drop, or even just level off, the only way to do this is to build more housing," says Worldchanging's founder Alex Steffen in this story on density in cities. "Desirable cities in growing regions either add housing rapidly or become unaffordable to most and socially inequitable. It's that simple. Limiting housing supply is what drives out the poor."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:30 PM | Your Say (8)
21st Century Problems and Solutions #23,215
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:22 PM | Your Say (2)
Vladimir Putin Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize
the director of the prestigious entity announced today that Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused of invading Ukraine - suspiciously un-peaceful action - has been nominated for the Peace Prize. Putin joins NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai as a nominee for the award to be announced in October. - - | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:05 PM | Your Say (5)
The Post-Protestant Ethic and Spirit of America
The new elite class of America is the old one: America’s mainline Protestant Christians in both the glory and the annoyingness of their moral confidence and spiritual certainty. They just stripped out the Christianity along the way. - - — The American MagazinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:58 PM | Your Say (2)
Rock On
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:35 PM | Your Say (8)
Easy-Bake Evolution: 50 Years of Cakes, Cookies, and Gender Politics
I had the 1981 Mini-Wave model, the boxy, yellow microwave style, which was, in my 7-year-old mind, the only kind of Easy-Bake there was. One day, my 4-year-old brother had a brilliant idea—to “cook” a green plastic steak from our 1972 Mattel Tuff Stuff Play Food set. Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:24 PM | Your Say (1)
The Prison Palimpsest: A Former Tour Guide Looks Back at Eastern State Penitentiary
He received meals of mush, meat, and potatoes through a slot in one wall; sun through a small skylight called the “dead eye”; and exercise in his own little walled yard. In an era when the White House lacked running water, Prisoner #1 had a toilet and a tap. —Vol. 2, No. 1—The Appendix
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (0)
This is a Cake
She's the two time gold medal champion on the show "Challenge" and the owner of Studio Cake, a custom-order bakery in Menlo Park, California. The Stanford alum and former NASA engineer uses her her masters in engineering and work experience from NASA, to construct incredible works of edible art. - - My Modern Metropolis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:08 PM | Your Say (5)
Media hardest hit.
Gay queens of Miami second hardest hit: Russia puts Obama’s vacation plans in jeopardyPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (1)
The Achievements of Bettina Obama
as a majority of Americans say his administration has mostly failed at growing the economy, creating jobs, improving health care and the country’s image.... Approval of Obama among Democrats stands at 71 percent, near its 69 percent record low (September 2013). For independents, 28 percent approve, which is also near the 25 percent all-time low among this group (July 2013). And approval of Obama among Republicans hits a new low of five percent.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (4)
Too many people frittered away the Design Margin.
It was spent and squandered by those both who felt it was immoral to be so rich and while simultaneously convinced these riches were inexhaustible.
It happened because too many worked tirelessly to take America down a peg or two, out of spite; and from a sense of unassailable superiority. People who thought it was OK to blow the stash; open the borders; downsize the armed forces. Guys who believed you could churn out paper dollars and issue empty threats ad infinitum. Because like Paul Krugman once said: we can invent an alien invasion from outer space if we need to. Belmont Club サ Ivan Ilyin
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (0)
The Mush of the Wimps
Obama (and his Secretary of State) seem to believe that humanity has — by virtue of nothing at all, except perhaps his say-so —transcended itself and entered into a we-are-stardust-we-are-golden happy place, where (in Europe, at least) nobody wants war, because everyone is loving peace. - - The Anchoress
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:09 PM | Your Say (0)
Bullseye: Return of the Longbow
The longbow is the purest, oldest form of archery. No gizmos, no gimmicks and long hours of practice required. Not many people use them these days, but there’s certainly growth in this niche of the bow market. It’s reflective, he says, of this interest in simpler things that’s “been echoing throughout our lives.” - Modern Farmer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (5)
They Come for the War
As in other wars, most foreign fighters will not care about the locals. They are not the Peace Corps.They come for the war. They will not stay to rebuild because few really care, and fewer still can do good work. They will help wreck Syria and kill its people in their apocalyptic playground, and Syrians who at first welcomed them will grow to hate them and finally kill them. Michael Yon, Syria not-a-crosswalk
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (0)
Teachers R Dum
Bill de Blasio’s wife says racism is the issue, but New York spends $20 billion yearly trying to make inner-city schools smarter.It ain’t happenin’. Yes, America scores badly for a Western country, but when you adjust for race, white kids are doing pretty well. The beauty of a free market solution, however, is you don’t have to get into all that. If you do well, you pass. If you do badly, drop out and go learn a trade. - - Gavin McInnes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (1)
Why didn't it exist before?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:53 AM | Your Say (7)
March 5, 2014
I smoked pot in Jerry Brown’s house.
I went to a party there that was pretty wild and virtually everyone was smoking reefer, myself included. We all did in those days, especially we wannabe screenwriters. Jerry was the California secretary of State at the time, which gave all the cannabis toking an extra je ne sais quoi. As I recall, Jerry wasn’t even there for most of the event, though I could be mistaken. I was a little ripped. Roger L. Simon - - Legal Weed? Governor Moonbeam Grows Up
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 PM | Your Say (1)
Scientific instruments have always been devices of power:
those who have the best ones can find out the most.
Galileo knew this — he kept up a cordial correspondence with his fellow astronomer Johannes Kepler in Prague, but when Kepler requested the loan of a telescope, the Italian found excuses. Galileo saw that, with one of these devices, Kepler would become a more serious rival. Instruments, he understood, confer authority. Science / a cult of hi-tech instruments
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 PM | Your Say (3)
The Young Clone of Ellen Degeneres Pretending to Be a Boy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:03 PM | Your Say (7)
La Famille
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:48 PM | Your Say (2)
Cheer up, Piers. You can always get a job as my punchbag
Thus Jeremy Clarkson in | The Sunday Times: Piers Morgan’s lost yet another job. He really is down this time. So why not fire up the laptop and kick him a bit? ....And at the British Press awards gave him one of her hard stares from across the room. “Why’s your f****** wife looking at me like that?” he thundered. So I punched him. And then I punched him again. And then I thought: “You know what? I don’t think this would ever get boring.” So I punched him again.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:41 PM | Your Say (3)
Word Around the Net: THEY CARE IF ITS REAL
Corrupt judges, abuse of power, lying for money, a huge multi-national conspiracy to commit fraud...this has blockbuster written all over it. Except the bad guys are anti-oil environmentalists, activist lawyers, and government officials. In other words: don't expect to see an HBO movie about this any time soon. Word Around the Net: THEY CARE IF ITS REAL
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:26 PM | Your Say (2)
One tweet sums up the Oscars, Hollywood, and the Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:42 PM | Your Say (0)
"You know. For kids."
and dubbed them “Hula-Hoops” after the hip-swaying Hawaiian dance. The product enjoyed brisk sales initially – 100 million sold within the first year. But interest in the Hula-Hoop waned quickly until the mid-1960s, when Wham-O added ball bearings inside the plastic tube (which meant you could hear that stitch in your side developing), launching a Hula-Hoop revival that lasted over 15 years. The product was selling as fast as Wham-O could make them (sometimes 20,000 a day), and Arthur K. Melin patented the Hula-Hoop on this day in history, 1963.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (2)
In the light
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (0)
Drag Show at Okinawa Military Base
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (13)
"After reading a long, technical argument for wage control"
Think of the vast energy that the Left devotes to “proving,” in tedious, excruciating detail, the need for more regulation & central planning. Billions of words spun to justify one sordid little lust. -- HappyAcresPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (1)
4 of 18 Beautiful Words The English Language Really Needs To Steal
5. Goya – UrduThe suspension of disbelief that can occur through good fiction or storytelling It takes a talented storyteller, to create a sense of ‘Goya’ or as we would called it “disbelief and wonder”6. Prozvonit – Czech
If you’re too cheap to pay for a phonecall, you’ll have done this before. It’s a term used to describe the act of calling someone, letting the phone ring out a few times and then hanging up. Thus forcing the other person to call you back on their own dime.7. Dépaysement – French
The longing feeling of being homesick.8. Sobremesa – Spanish
Those clichéd conversations You’ve just had a delicious dinner with your friends and now you’re all talking about food related subjects and discussing the meal. | So Bad So Good
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (5)
Hillary! Because Vagina!
Using those high level diplomatic skills learned while Secretary of State: Hitlary Clinton compares Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s in Nazi GermanyPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (8)
Liberal financiers support the arts but most conservatives have been reluctant.
They seem more willing to endow a chair at a think tank for yet another position paper.
I have nothing against think tanks or position papers (some of my best friends are, etc....), but this is shortsighted. One terrific film or television series reaches vastly more people and, I would wager, effectuates vastly more change -- and it might even make a profit into the bargain (something conservatives, I would think, would applaud) that gives the ability to do more and make a still greater impact. But it has to be craftily done. - - Roger L. Simon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (4)
The Prophet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (1)
Borders
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (4)
The "List" Articles Have Pretty Much Run Their Course
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (1)
March 4, 2014
All purpose progressive comment.
"Every day millions of lesbian polar bears are dying because of Israeli apartheid policies and what do you people like you do? Nothing?! Because you don't care do you? Raaaaacist Rapists!!"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:43 PM | Your Say (10)
Eat Celebrity Meat
Ellen DeGeneres Please welcome the Ellen Salami -- As a salami, we see Ellen Salami composition blended with ostrich. Black pepper and garlic with a playful kick of mustard give the Ellen salami a highly approachable and well-rounded flavor. A hint of brandy and shallots will finish off the Ellen salami in exquisite fashion.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:28 PM | Your Say (5)
Who Says There's No Good News?
After Finally Collecting Every Phone Number In North America, Radio Shack Starts Closing Thousands Of Locations While Trying To Remember What Sinister Step B Was | The Rumford MeteorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:16 PM | Your Say (7)
To see it coming would have invalidated
the fundamental premise of Obama’s foreign policy: that the train line was unobstructed;that he could talk to people he now knows he can’t talk to. For a while the deal making seemed too almost too good to be true and Obama marketed his “opportunities” and “investments” with almost evangelical zeal. Even now Obama plans to tell Benjamin Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians. One of those magic deals Kerry’s negotiated, like the one with Syria. He is figuring to tell the Israeli prime minister he had better buy now while supplies last or miss the deal of the century, the deal of a lifetime! Belmont Club » Walking Into It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 PM | Your Say (2)
Because warming!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (0)
"Imagine a naive graduate student who was truly curious about the settled science of homosexuality"
It's difficult to imagine her receiving a comment as gentle as "You shouldn't show things like that.
People will get the wrong impression." Rather, she'd probably have to be escorted off campus through a gauntlet of rock-throwing primitives. The lesson here is that the evidence of your eyes might contradict the dogma of the Church of Liberalism, and if your eyes offend us, then you'd better pluck them out before we do. One Cʘsmos: My Time Among the Savages of the Left
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:31 PM | Your Say (0)
The Key: An "Uncontested Arrival"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (11)
A very inconvenient truth:
Romney was right, Obama wrong. That it concedes it at all is surprising.
But—like the other articles of its type that I’ve read—it treats that fact as though it exists in a vacuum. There are no larger conclusions drawn, and why would there be? To do that would be to concede far more than these authors could bear. neo-neocon Playing to the cheap seats
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (1)
The Companion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (3)
A textbook KGB takeover operation
Putin’s challenge now is to reclaim this “Little Russia” for his “Greater Russia,” without actually provoking a world war.In Western politicians like Barack Obama and the clowns of the EU, he has his ideal “negotiating partners.” They will keep drawing their “lines in the sand” a few steps behind where he has already trodden. - - Ukraine : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (1)
March 3, 2014
Al Sharpton Urges Vladimir Putin to Take Obama Horseback Riding
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:36 PM | Your Say (1)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:21 PM | Your Say (1)
Those who work in D.C. when government offices close for a "snow day."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:12 PM | Your Say (12)
WaPo Takes a Brief Break from Kissing the President's Ass
It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world.Won't last. They'll be back at his feeding trough tomorrow.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:33 PM | Your Say (3)
America’s Angriest Store: How Whole Foods Attracts Complete Shitheads.
I wonder, why are these people all so angry?Is it something about Whole Foods that brings it out of them? Is it just their proximity to other miserable souls just like them? Is it the outward projection of inner self-loathing brought on by the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of social pressure to pay higher prices for organic, GMO-free, gluten-free, paleo, macro, whole foods? They stand in the middle of the aisles, blocking passage of any other cart, staring intently at the selection asking themselves that critical question: which one of these olive oils makes me seem coolest and most socially conscious, while also making the raw vegetable salad I’m preparing for the monthly condo board meeting seem most rustic and artisanal? — Culture Club — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (13)
The Coming Collapse of the Welfare State
only one of them will work full time, while the other balances part time work, and they will do all this while being expected to support social services for new immigrants and a native working class displaced by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, not to mention the elderly and the entire bureaucracy that has grown around them. - - Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (0)
"In the era before we got our Pacific port in 1848
"and in the 166-year interval since then, the security and safety of the American peoplehave depended not one wit on the status of the Russian-speaking Crimea. Should the local population now choose fealty to the Grand Thief in Moscow over the ruffians and rabble who have seized Kiev, what’s to matter! Worse still, how long can America survive the screeching sanctimony and mindless meddling of Susan Rice and Samantha Power? Mr. President, send them back to geography class; don’t draw any new Red Lines. This one has been morphing for centuries among the quarreling tribes, peoples, potentates, Patriarchs and pretenders of a small region that is none of our damn business.Memo to Obama: This Was Their Red Line! | Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (4)
This 1924 Illustration Nails the Real Future of Drone Warfare
But it's still amazing to see illustrations of unmanned aerial vehicles that are nearly a century old. Like this drone command center from 1924, with pilots sitting 500 miles away from the battlefield. It's an image that's strikingly similar to the drone pilots of today. - - Paleofuture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (0)
The Ukraine -- Monday Noon Update:
• The Kiev regime announces general mobilization; only 1% to 1.5% of conscripts bother to turn up
• A dozen major cities—pretty much everything southeast of the line that runs from Kharkov to Odessa—are flying the Russian tricolor
• Ukraine's naval flagship is flying Russia's naval flag
• The newly appointed head of Ukrainian navy has defected to the Russian side in Crimea within a few hours of being appointed
• Most of the Ukrainian military units in Crimea have gone over to the Russian side voluntarily, without a single shot fired
• Ukrainian troops from Kirov have been ordered to march on Crimea, but have refused to obey (illegal) orders from Kiev
• During the last two weeks of February 143,000 Ukrainian citizens have requested asylum in Russia.
- - ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (2)
Ukraine isn’t a country:
it’s a Frankenstein monster composed of pieces of dead empires, stitched together by Stalin.
It has never had a government in the Western sense of the term after the collapse of the Soviet Union gave it independence, just the equivalent of the family offices for one predatory oligarch after another–including the “Gas Princess,” Yulia Tymoshenko. It has a per capital income of $3,300 per year, about the same as Egypt and Syria, and less than a tenth of the European average. The whole market capitalization of its stock exchange is worth less than the Disney Company. It’s a basket case that claims to need $35 billion to survive the next two years. Money talks and bullshit walks. Who wants to ask the American taxpayer for $35 billion for Ukraine, one of the most corrupt economies on earth? How about $5 billion? Secretary of State Kerry is talking about $1 billion in loan guarantees, and the Europeans are talking a similar amount. That’s not diplomacy. It’s a clown show. - - Spengler Ukraine Is Hopeless … but Not Serious
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (3)
The "true"price of gold
to them it's a onsey-twosey swapmeet, there simply isn't enough available to buy, and it's too small to equitably absorb the lots they sell.... The Giants have only one market for the quantities they move around: each other. This, he says, sets the other "true" price of gold, called the "In Size" price, estimated to be as high as twenty times the market price. He goes on to say there is no conspiracy involved, just simple privacy. - - ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (2)
March 2, 2014
Da Fix Is In. We Wuz Robbed!
DeGeneres: 12 Years a Slave Wins or You're All Racist! | Truth RevoltPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:00 PM | Your Say (2)
We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t.
We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media.Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box. How many faithful New York Times readers have no idea what American conservatives think, much less how Russian oligarchs do? Well bred and well read Americans live in an ideological and cultural cocoon and this makes them fatally slow to understand the very different motivations that animate actors ranging from the Tea Party to the Kremlin to, dare we say it, the Supreme Leader and Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon - The American Interest
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 PM | Your Say (2)
Paradox: Venezuela failing "despite" government having absolute control
PREVIOUSLY on the paradoxes that vex the minds of liberals/journalists:
•Paradox: Those most knowledgeable about science are least likely to believe climate alarmists
•Paradox: Those who support Obamacare don't understand it
•Paradox: Rather than work, people accept free money!
•Paradox: Higher taxes yield less revenue
•Paradox: Price high despite shortage; Also: despite homeowners protecting themselves, crime is down.
•Paradox: "Despite" having the most generous benefits for homelessness, homeless flock to San Francisco
•Paradox: Gun sales up despite politicians' threats to ban gun sales
•Paradox: Student test scores improve despite school funding decrease
•News report: Gun crime down "despite" increase in gun sales
•It's a paradox: Congress unpopular "despite record"
•"Ironically," conservatives and their children are happier
•It's a paradox!: Crime down when criminals are in jail.
•Paradox: Crime is down despite criminals being in prison
•Paradox: Few fraudulent voters if voters are required to have IDs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:07 PM | Your Say (5)
When you allow technology to ‘empower’ the ordinary Joe,
That’s how we know technology has value, because people use it to their advantage. And because they do it will be all in your face until you force it away or turn away yourself. If you want to immerse yourself in the creativity of the common man, this is your era. You have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Vines and dozens of other social media services. You will have a diverse experience. You will see everybody's point of view, and you'll never have to decide. You'll never have to sacrifice. You'll never have to discriminate. Social media presents perfect empathy for everyone. All you do is open your ears and eyes and every possible point of view is represented. It is a cornucopia of the common. Technology, Diverse Empowerment & Slavish Dependency - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:38 PM | Your Say (2)
The Bizarre and Fascinating Nature of Duck Sex
But if you just want to see duck penises firing through insane glass contraptions, she has plenty of those too. - - Modern FarmerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 PM | Your Say (8)
Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience
There’s a sign in the Durham store suggestingthat shoppers bag their organic and conventional fruit separately—lest one rub off on the other—and grind their organic coffees at home—because the Whole Foods grinders process conventional coffee, too, and so might transfer some non-organic dust. “This slicer used for cutting both CONVENTIONAL and ORGANIC breads” warns a sign above the Durham location’s bread slicer. - The Daily Beast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (20)
Kaboom
A freedom I would not wish upon my worst enemy, or even the urban dogs who would fight us for pigeon carcasses. Nowadays I can afford any sort of cereal I like. I can even spring the extra quarter for the high-class muesli-inflected Eurocereals if I like. I'll never escape where I came from. And where I came from was Kaboomville. Population: A ghastly clown, his stupid pink-purple parasol, and me. With my spoon, crying into my oddly discolored milk. Ace of Spades HQ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (12)
The Wisdom of a Ukrainian Plumber
Russia holds all the trump cards in this situation.It can turn off Western Europe’s central heating at a stroke, and for Europeans such heating is the whole meaning and purpose of life—together with six-week annual holidays in Bali or Benidorm. Therefore Europe will risk nothing for the sake of Ukraine, except perhaps a few billion in loans of no one’s money, a trifle in current economic circumstances. If Bismarck were to return today, he would say that the whole of Ukraine was not worth the cold of one unheated radiator. -- Theodore Dalrymple
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (6)
Why is Putin Doing This?
Because he can. That's it, that's all you need to know. The situation in Kiev— in which people representing one half of the country (the Ukrainian-speaking west) took power to some extent at the expense of the Russian-speaking east — created the perfect opportunity for Moscow to divide and conquer. As soon as the revolution in Kiev happened, there was an unhappy rumbling in the Crimea, which has a large Russian population and is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It was a small rumbling, but just big enough for Russia to exploit. And when such an opportunity presents itself, one would be foolish not to take it, especially if one's name is Vladimir Putin. Putin Declares War on Ukraine. The Why and What Next | New Republic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (1)
Behind every awful, dangerous decision lurks one evil beast: the Cool.
At its most harmless, it is annoying. At its worst, it is deadly, on a massive scale. The Cool are the termites of life, infiltrating every nook and cranny and destroying it from within. The Cool report the news, write the scripts, teach our children, run our government—and each day they pass judgment on those who don’t worship at the altar of their coolness. The cool fawn over terrorists, mock the military, and denigrate employers. They are, in short, awful people. The Hipster Elite and Their War on You
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:56 AM | Your Say (5)
"My fiftieth year had come and gone,"
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
-William Butler Yeats
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 AM | Your Say (0)
March 1, 2014
Michael Totten: "Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Was Easy to Predict"
Crimea has its own flag. It hosts the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet.It defiantly refuses to place itself within the Ukrainian time zone. Though it’s dead south of Kiev, it uses the more easterly Moscow time zone instead.,,,, What Moscow cares about in Crimea very much is Sevastopol. That’s where Russia’s Black Sea fleet makes its home. Neither Sean nor I dared take any photographs of it, not even discreetly from the car as we drove past. It’s not a good idea to take pictures of military installations anywhere in the world, especially not Russian military installations. - - Totten @ World Affairs Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (5)
Flock Star:
With Americans eating 8 billion chickens annually, the feather supply is endless. Unlike geese, chickens don’t produce the type of down needed to manufacture products for human warmth. The poultry industry produces around six billion tons of feathers annually, typically discarded as useless, plucked by machines in massive processing plants and hauled to landfills where, due to their composition, they are unable to decompose. But recently, things have taken a turn for the unglamorous by-product: they’re showing up in everything from art projects to running shoes to car manufacturing.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:33 PM | Your Say (11)
Ready to Rumble? 5,000 Rounds Each and Flamethrowers Are a Dead Giveaway.
Officers Of 76th Russian Shock Troops Division Operating In Ukraine | Zero Hedge According to one of the participants in the operation, officers and contractors of the 76th Shock Troops Division have been re-locating to Ukrainian territory since last week.By early this week, there were already more than 100 soldiers. The last of the famous detachments was sent on Thursday, 27 February. They are fully armed, with 5,000 rounds of ammunition per person. There is one truck per 10 soldiers, and they are completely loaded with weapons including flame-throwers.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:39 PM | Your Say (9)
Free to Good Home
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (1)
Where guns are outlawed
Meanwhile in the people's utopia of China: Knifing attack at China railway station leaves 27 dead more than 100 injured :Gruesome photos of the scene in Kunming from a local TV news broadcast showed several people, their clothing soaked in blood, lying on a tile floor inside the station, and more people on the ground outside. State-run CCTV news said authorities had killed the attackers.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:05 PM | Your Say (6)
Palin Mocked in 2008 for Warning Putin May Invade Ukraine if Obama Elected
She could see Russia from her house. Palin said then:
After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next. - - Big peace
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 AM | Your Say (35)